A blind employee of the Department of Veterans Affairs is suing the federal agency on grounds that their new electronic health records system makes it impossible for her to do her job.
A clinical social worker, Laurette Santos has worked for the VA for a decade, but when the agency switched to Oracle Health’s Cerner EHR in 2022, her productivity plummeted. Sighted people had to help her complete basic tasks like reading her clients’ files because the new system could not accommodate the Jobs Access With Speech software — the most commonly used screen reader for federal employees.
“I am extremely independent, and I work to maintain that independence,” said Santos, who lives in White City, Oregon. “I feel that they came along and made me disabled again, and I object to that.”
Her struggles with accessible technology may soon spread. After pausing the rollout of Oracle’s EHR system due to numerous issues, the VA is slated to deploy it to the rest of the country next year. Thousands of federal employees with disabilities may soon have to wrestle with a system that has also stymied disabled patients.
Many of these federal workers struggle to access the tools necessary to do their job, disability advocates told STAT, even though the federal government has to provide employees with accessible technology.
Santos’ lawsuit alleges that the VA is violating two sections of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973: Section 501 and Section 508. These regulations ensure equal protection and opportunity for federal employees with disabilities, and Santos’ lawsuit is part of a recent push to use them as legal tools.
“Federal agencies are required to be 508-compliant. So the fact that this program is not 508-compliant and the fact that this woman is having to rely on help from sighted colleagues for major job responsibilities — this is making her a second-class worker,” said Stephanie Flynt McEben, a public policy analyst at the National Disability Rights Network.
But this case is years in the making. The Department of Defense sent out a call to modernize the federal government’s EHR in 2015, and the National Federation of the Blind sent a letter to the DoD, imploring the agency to choose a system “compatible with screen-access software,” like screen readers. When the NFB learned that DoD had chosen Cerner, they sent letters to the company as well, but received no reply.
Three years later, in 2018, the VA selected the contract of Cerner, with the contract stating that the software had to be 508 compliant. But when Santos tried out the software in 2019 to make sure that it was accessible, nothing had changed.
“Within 10 minutes, we knew that it was not compatible with my screen reading software, and we told them that. But we didn’t hear anything back,” said Santos.
If anything changed when Oracle announced its purchase of Cerner in 2021, it did not appear different to Santos when the switch occurred in 2022. She was stuck with an inaccessible system. The social worker filed a claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, hoping that the situation could be resolved internally. But the agency rebuffed her, saying that there was no problem with the system. So Santos sued her employer.
The lawsuit also alleges that the VA did not consult with its own 508 Compliance Office before selecting the Cerner contract. A spokesperson for the agency declined to comment on these matters, saying the agency does not comment on ongoing litigation. Oracle also did not respond to a request for comment.
This whole situation has left Santos incredibly frustrated. She loved her job. When she was hired, “I was super excited, because as a blind person, I understand the intricacies of what it is to be blind,” she said. “Not only having vision, but also losing my vision slowly over time, and I was very excited to think that I could possibly make a difference in those people’s lives.”
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